


Gridscapes

by DragonWarden



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Betrayal, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 19:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonWarden/pseuds/DragonWarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the Grid's stories can be just as haunting and malleable as the gridscape itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wtb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtb/gifts).



  
[Winzler's original art post](http://307020.com/post/20155528699/gridscape-tutorial-part-3-3-aaaaand-the)

He shuffled carefully over the uneven surfaces, still hunched, though the worst of his wounds have finally begun to knit. It has almost become a subprocess, now, the slide and ghosting of fingertips across any surface they could reach - not for support, but for the tiny trickles of energy that came with the hair-fine threads embedded in the planes; thin sips that sometimes seemed to only sharpen his appetite, rather than temper it.

He paused upon the lip of his temporary shelter, one hand spreading blindly across the thickest nexus within reach, eyes tracing the contours of land and levels leading toward distant towers. But no matter how much he drank in - the familiar sight of elegant city lines, the meager offerings from a system that has always felt just a little bit foreign - all he could feel within was a gnawing, boundless emptiness.


	2. Chapter 2

  
[Winzler's original art post](http://307020.com/post/20222527223/adventuresinartrage-why-the-palette-knife-wins)

He could almost _taste_ the pool’s energy before he ever registered its soft glow.

A chill brush across dull, over-heated traces, and his limping steps quickened of their own volition. It wasn’t until he had rounded a particularly craggy outcropping that he could finally see shimmering blue radiance lining the rocks ahead, spilling in streams and rivulets through their cracks into a basin deep enough to sink into. And though he had long pruned the most optimistic outlooks from his predictive heuristics, he couldn’t help the base processes that urged him toward light, toward _survival_. 

Even as he fell heavily to one knee, dipping a shaking hand through the wavering surface, alerts began flagging for attention left, right, and center.

Oases like these always attracted all sorts of attention.

“Hey! Hands up where I can see them or you’re gonna get a face-full of … by the deeps. Tron?”


	3. Chapter 3

  
[Winzler's original art post](http://307020.com/post/20475283130/spicer-motherfucking-lovejoy-grey-sw)

Lines already criss-crossed the space over the chiaroscuro map of shadows far below, but even as they watched, another one pulsed into being; a thick ray of clean, actinic blue, refined energy of the purest grade. The others crouched, preparing, as sails engaged beneath them with distant clunks, and he had to command his own damaged limbs to remain still and locked. His place was no longer amongst them.

“A lot of activity going on down there.”

“And that’s why we’re here,” he murmured. The need for secrecy smoothed the fractured syllables; made them almost normal, almost palatable at these low volumes. The sails were fully deployed by now, and the elegant lines of the freighter began to emerge, accelerating smoothly from its hangar.

“Tron … “

He cut her off with a gesture, could tell where the tentative tone would lead. He had already conceded much in coming this far, but they knew where the line between the improbable and the impossible was drawn. He knew all too well now what the consequences could be for believing in the latter; it was not a mistake he cared to repeat.

“Go,” he rasped, and there was a soft hiss of deploying lines. One was just a fraction of a microcyle slower than the others, but eventually, all four were cutting smoothly through the air.

As the lithe silhouettes unfurled into polished arcs, aimed for the freighter’s hull, he aborted the urge to indulge in a memory of free-fall and turned to limp back toward the city limits.

  
[Winzler's later colored post](http://307020.com/post/41917309337/i-was-going-to-make-this-moebius-inspired)


	4. Chapter 4

  
[Winzler's original art post](http://307020.com/post/42221767254/and-heres-an-example-of-what-to-do-with-the)

For a single, precious nano, he was free.

As the stolen lightjet entered the apogee of its climb, he did not feel the weight of his damaged limbs. As his sensors temporarily reported undefineds, confounded by the lack of vectors at the arc’s crest, the ever-present murmur of tactical feeds fell into standby and there was silence. The jet strained against its hardcoded limits, engine guttering, and the moment was suspended when it died altogether and he could only wait … wait … wait to see if it would re-ignite, if they would survive, if they would fly again …

Everything started again with a shriek of delirious laughter.

The iso pushed them into a punishing dive as the engine roared. Tron gritted his teeth as the forces clawed at old fractures, fought to sort through the sudden flood of new data, managed to grind out, “Down!” when he sensed the jet’s vector leveling and the iso obediently drove them deeper into the clouds.

The lights appeared first; scattered bursts of brilliance as they punched through the atmospheric haze. By the time the lines became a recognizable map, though, there was another excited whoop from the iso as she strained against the controls … the lightjet groaned as it fought to pull its nose up, barely clearing the lowest structures, light ribbon shimmering bright with shed heat behind it.

There was a hollow _crump_ behind them and a glimmer of reflected light off building surfaces when someone behind them was not so lucky. “Think we’re gonna make it,” the iso gasped, humming with excess energy, the jet dancing beneath her touch.

“The question is why this is necessary in the first place,” he retorted, fingers curling into the armrests, feeling joints creak and warning messages flash like lightning crawling across the bellies of the clouds.

“Dunno. They’re getting better at finding us - “

The second time already, that a potential meeting was interrupted. A second missed chance at pooling resources, at joining forces, at potential healing - 

” - but Flynn got a message to me. He wants to try again. He said he’ll be at - “

\- and suddenly, he wondered if more than just his shell had been damaged, wondered how he could have been so blind. Wondered why it was, that users seemed to always hold the balance of salvation and destruction in their hands. “Flynn,” he groaned, closing his eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

  
[Winzler's original art post](http://307020.com/post/49714718109/have-a-cityscape)

The light stabbed across the horizon, brighter than anything else above or below, piercing the relay gate through and through. What once had, long ago, been a shining beacon promising freedom, now heralded the arrival of their enslavement or destruction.

Tron had to swallow against the jagged disappointment of being proven right. 

“We have to go … ” Flynn husked, staring too, voice dry with anxiety and dread. “We have to find the others, regroup and - “

“No. No more regrouping.”

Flynn turned to him. “But - “

The user had the grace not to pretend confusion. Beyond the single, token protest, Flynn bit his lip, glanced once more at the lightbeam that would inevitably bring Clu and his troops, and then slumped in defeat. “At least let me heal you.”

“No time,” Tron grunted, pushing to his feet. No time, because what was between Flynn and Clu, whatever stub that remained mutual to both their cores, was working in every way but how it should. There was no understanding, no recognition … only a steady leak of information that drew one to the other, as if the system itself could no longer abide their enmity and sought to force a confrontation, once and for all. “And no use. You should go.”

“What? No! Let me heal you first, you’re still our secret - our greatest weapon … “

“To what end? _You know everything._ ” And thus, by extension, Clu knew as well; or would know, soon enough. 

They had looked, they had all looked, isos and rebels alike - looking for betrayal, for a traitor … looked everywhere, except at Flynn. Flynn, who was their greatest ally; Flynn, who was their greatest weakness.

“Then I’ll take myself out of the equation.”

Tron froze. Before he could even formulate an exclamation, much less a query, Flynn had already reached back, undocking his own disc. In the cold white light that sprang from it, Tron met the user’s gaze. “Flynn … _no_.”

It was beautiful, a user’s core. Flynn smiled gently through its delicate spirals. “Go, Tron.”

Tron clenched jaw and hands. Bowed his head, and finally turned. Tried to pretend that the waver of light reflected from the walls was a result of his own unsteady limp, but could not find it in himself to ignore the quiet narration dying slowly behind him.

“Clu. Clu happened. It was a coup … I never saw him again … “

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a one-shot drabble for one of Winzler's many alien and hauntingly beautiful gridscape paintings, but then kept going when she kept churning out the landscapes. By the second one, I had mapped out the conclusion, but it actually took over a year before I finally completed the series. \o/


End file.
